TIFF 2013: Prisoners Review

Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal find themselves at cross-purposes in “Prisoners.”

Torrential rain in the movies is always a shorthand for darkness and depravity. Prisoners has a lot of rain.

The child abduction thriller stars Hugh Jackman as an anguished father who reluctantly turns to vigilante justice, and Jake Gyllenhaal in a twitchy-eyed performance as the dogged detective investigating the case. Two young girls disappear into thin air, and the only lead anyone has is that they were seen playing next to a dilapidated RV before being abducted. From that setting, the film splinters into two different investigative techniques to find the missing children: torture and false imprisonment from Jackman’s angle, and lawful interrogation and evidence analysis from Gyllenhaal.

The film is littered with red herring suspects that act in incomprehensible ways. I think there’s an old adage somewhere (or maybe common police knowledge) that suspects who are innocent have no reason to run. For some reason, in this film, they always do. The solution to the mystery is entirely coincidental and convoluted – one cliched scene involves a character smashing his desk in frustration and then having an epiphany as he discovers the missing clue that was in front of him all along – and putting the puzzle pieces together from the film adds up to an entirely unsatisfactory picture. Hollywood films always seem to try to create an answer, however minute, for the killer’s motivation, forgetting that some of the strongest films in the genre (The Vanishing, Se7en, Zodiac) entirely ignore this aspect. Some people are evil, and we can leave it at that.

Prisoners has been described as a “near-perfect” film. I’d agree with that assessment. It’s atmospheric and tense, with great performances by all of the actors. Paul Dano in particular, as the near-mute murder suspect, carves out an enigmatic character in minimal screen time. It’s a great film, up until the point where it descends into formulaic thriller territory by explaining the narrative’s loose ends with a confrontation and chase sequence. However, the final scene of the film redeems this detour into familiar territory by ending on a chilling and ambiguous note. It doesn’t push the boundaries of the genre, but it’s an expertly-made thriller.

Grade: A-

Sidenote: Gyllenhaal’s character is supposed to be a veteran detective, but for some reason he’s visibly hurt and shaken by grieving parents who hate his guts because he’s having trouble finding their children. I would think that being devoted to the job (his character is introduced eating Chinese food alone on Thanksgiving – a cinematic signpost telling us that he is the “devoted workaholic with no family or friends”), Gyllenhaal would have a thicker layer of skin and perhaps be a bit more cynical.

Real Steel

Leave it to Disney to serve up an action-packed robot boxing movie with a heaping serving of Velveeta. In between scenes of steel crushing steel there’s still enough time to fill the gaps with cliched estranged father-and-son bonding. Hugh Jackman is a degenerate drunk, gambler, and he’s heavily in debt to all the people you don’t want to be in debt to. Oh, and he has a son he hasn’t spoken to in eleven years…or eight years, he’s not entirely sure. Anyway, he comes into custody of the child after his ex-wife dies inexplicably (it’s literally just a note in the script: “Mom dies to bring Jackman & Son together for hijinks, never mention her death again”). It’s a familiar story, but Real Steel plays it well.

After seeing the original Twilight Zone episode that this movie was based on (which in turn was based on a Richard Matheson short story), the climax of the film is a bit of a letdown. Admittedly it isn’t plausible for the film to end in the same way – the robots in this one are just too powerful – but it is a little underwhelming to see a retread of Rocky (this time with robots!). It’s too be expected though – the original ending would’ve been a little too dark for the movie’s target audience of 6 – 75. I think it could’ve been quite fitting and emotional (although it would’ve been a retread of The Champ…this time with robots!)

What Real Steel lacks in flesh-and-blood feeling it makes up for in multiple robot-on-robot action sequences. By my count, there’s seven or eight different fights – each probably lasting about three-four minutes. Which means a solid return on movie ticket to robot action – one dollar gets you two and a half minutes of machinery crushing ACTION! And what action it is. It’s surprising how effective the boxing sequences are. The stakes are non-existent (these are CGI fighters) but we believe everything we see because of incredible effects, great sound design, and strong editing. It’s quite exciting and if it doesn’t make you want to shadowbox after the movie’s over, then you’re lying.

The only missteps of the film is when its lays on the cheese a little thick. Evangeline Lilly’s character is mostly the cause of this, essentially because she isn’t given much to do besides wax nostalgically about what a great fighter Jackman used to be and then tear up when Jackman & Son start bonding. Also, Real Steel is guilty of one of my biggest pet peeves – dancing scenes that are supposed to be adorable. Dakota Goyo plays the young son in the movie and he’s excellent, often showing up Lilly and Jackman in the acting department. Except when he starts dancing with his robot. It’s probably just me but I’ve never enjoyed scenes where characters are in their own homes, or in private, or anywhere, really, and they dance to a song they like. I find it neither enjoyable, entertaining, nor adorable. It’s awkward and eye-roll inducing. Please no more dancing scenes like this.

Despite its flaws, Real Steel is a crowd-pleasing collage of  two Sylvester Stallone films – Over the Top and Rocky,  – but I’d be damned to say it isn’t an enjoyable, if formulaic, flick that manages to hit all the right beats.

Real Steel is the real deal (….Sigh. I’ll let myself out).

Grade: B-

Sidenote: There’s a scene with Evangeline Lilly in a bar watching an important robot boxing event for Jackman & Son. It’s unintentionally hilarious and distracting because of an extra who really, really wants to talk to her. It’s the equivalent of the scene from Bruno when he’s auditioning for a part on NBC’s Medium….except this actually made it into the final cut.

Rant of the Day: “It was all a dream” (or Outlandish Film Interpretations)

Isaac Asimov is a master storyteller. One of the first books I ever read by him was a collection of short stories called Robot Visions. What I love about Asimov is that he makes rules for the universes that he is writing for and then slavishly sticks to them. For his robot stories, he created the Three Laws of Robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

One of my favorite stories from the collection is called “Runaround” (which is also the first story where Asimov’s three laws were explicitly laid out). The story deals with a robot that needs to get a rare element on Mercury’s surface in order to repair the life support system for a mining base where two scientists are. However, rather than harvesting the element as it was asked, the robot is found to be running around the pool in a massive circle. The scientists realize that the rare element is dangerous to the robot, which conflicts with the Third Law (self-preservation). Generally, this would be trumped by the Second Law (obey human orders), but in this case, one of the scientists casually issued the order without a sense of urgency. The whole story thus revolves around a dilemma within Asimov’s rules: if the robot harvests the element, it conflicts with the Third Law, but if it doesn’t harvest the element, that conflicts with the Second Law. The ambiguity within the rules Asimov has laid out becomes the basis for the entire story, rather than the story being haphazardly adapted to arbitrary rules.

What does this have to do with movies? IMDb message boards, or more specifically, Outlandish Film Interpretations.

A lot of films have ambiguous elements within them. These elements are then discussed on message boards across the world with various voices explaining what they mean. Sometimes the interpretations are credible, and help reveal a subtle theme from the film that you didn’t realize. Other times (well, most of the time) these interpretations are outlandish and ridiculous. I remember reading an interpretation about Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige where someone argued that Christian Bale’s character was just a figment of Hugh Jackman’s character’s imagination. What?

The problem with these Outlandish Film Interpretations is that they don’t follow the rules that the film has set out for them. In The Prestige, the two characters compete with one another to become the greatest magician in the world. They both have romantic love interests, and the characters put on magic shows that generate large audiences. Where can you explain that Christian Bale’s character is imaginary within the confines of the film? The short answer is: you can’t. You have to go outside the boundaries (and rules) of the film to make this argument credible – i.e. the “It was all a dream” explanation and therefore the rules of the film are not legitimate. This explanation can work in some cases (David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive…still one of my least favorite film experiences). But why not interpret a film based on the rules within it?

Asimov’s short stories outline the numerous ways a few simple rules can be interpreted and creatively reworked for an almost limitless supply of explanations (or discussions). So why throw out the rule book when you can work with it? Here’s the rule to avoid an Outlandish Film Interpretation: Everything you see onscreen is not a lie, unless explicitly indicated otherwise. This avoids the confusion of labeling the Lord of the Rings character Gimli a metaphor for labour rising up against the technological aggression of the industrial revolution (Sauron’s forces). He’s not. Gimli is a dwarf, Sauron’s forces are evil gremlins, goblins, and other creatures that go bump in the night. This first rule also helps with a film like The Usual Suspects, which does explicitly indicate that some of what we see onscreen is a lie – this can be interpreted within the world of the film (i.e. how much is bullshit and how much of the story has truth to it). Follow this, and the discussions based around the film seem much more interesting, rather than outlandish.

This rant was written because I’m tired of seeing people arguing that characters only exist as figments of other characters imaginations. The damning legacy of Fight Club continues to haunt our viewings of films (though it did explicitly state that a character was imaginary, and therefore adheres to the rule of a Decent Film Interpretation).